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5 Modern Houses in Portland

With its slim profile and sleek gray exterior, Lola Oyibo and Eric Boardman’s home in Portland, Oregon, bears little resemblance to the house it used to be. Keeping the footprint, foundation, and framing intact, the architect stripped the structure down to its bones, opening up the interior and adding a second story to give the family 1250 square feet —and a sweet modern space—in which to live. "It's the idea of reuse," architect Ben Waechter says. "We recreated a building that had reached the end of its lifespan, infusing it with another hundred years of living."

Photo on left by Sally Schoolmaster; photo on right, courtesy Atelier Waechter.

The first floor of the house used to be a warren of five tiny rooms, and the first thing you saw when you walked in the front door was the attic staircase. Waechter opened the space up into one large, light-filled room. A birch plywood-sheathed box was designed to look like an oversized piece of furniture, mimicking the light wood of the Eames chair and Case Study Daybed, while cleverly hiding the stairs, storage, and powder room inside. Photo by: Atelier Waechter.

Architects Mitchell Snyder and Shelley Martin's move to Portland brought about an entirely different lifestyle—one that involved a house, a yard, and for Snyder, the chance to launch his own firm, Mitchell Snyder Architecture, after first acquainting himself to Portland, Oregon, as a designer at Scott Edwards Architecture. His first project on his own: a chicken coop for the couple's new feathery friends. Photo by: John Clark

Architect Jeff Kovel renovated a ramshackle building in Portland's West End that serves as the office for his firm Skylab Design, the storefront for he furniture shop Intelligent Design, space for the salon D Studio, and home to the Kovel family. Erected in 1907, the building has housed a messenger service, a boardinghouse, a storage space, a gay bathhouse, and more recently, a store selling fine, handmade men’s lingerie. Photo by John Clark

Completed in 2004, the Belmont Street Lofts have settled neatly into their neighborhood, offering a contemporary complement to the architectural elder statesmen of the block. Photo by: John Clark